South Jersey TMJ Treatment and Surgery

The South Jersey oral surgeons at Lanzi Burke have experience in both TMJ disorder treatment and TMJ corrective surgery. TMJ disorders develop for many reasons. You might clench or grind your teeth, tightening your jaw muscles and stressing your TM joint. Or, you may have a damaged jaw joint due to injury or disease. Whatever the cause, the results may include a misaligned bite, pain, clicking or grating noises when you open your mouth, or trouble opening your mouth wide.

How the TMJ Works

The temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is one of the body’s most complex joints. In a normal temporomandibular joint, it functions both as a ball and socket type joint and as a sliding (translating) joint. A healthy temporomandibular joint allows you to eat, talk, and swallow without pain. However, when a temporomandibular joint is diseased or damaged, it can hurt whenever you move your jaw. Sometimes just relaxing jaw muscles with no motion at all may cause pain. The source of pain in the head and neck is often difficult to diagnose. Care must be taken to rule out other facts that can cause facial pain.

TMJ Treatment Options

Disorders of the temporomandibular joints often follow a certain pattern from the initial signs of dysfunction to degenerative joint disease. They are summarized as follows:

Conditions that interfere with the sliding of the disc on the condyle the “knob”

Excessive muscle movement creating a forward pull on the disc

Thinning of the disc

Stretching of the tissues that attach to the disc

Functional displacement of the disc – single click, multiple clicking

Functional dislocation of the disc

Dislocation with reduction (catching) – This is where your jaw sometimes becomes locked in a position and you have to move your jaw to get it back to a comfortable position (referred to as periodic displacement of disc)

Dislocation without reduction (closed lock) – This is where your jaw gets stuck, and requires your doctor to put it back into position (referred to as permanent displacement)

Inflammatory arthritis (Rheumatoid arthritis)

Degenerative joint disease (Osteoarthritis)

Non-Surgical TMJ Treatment

Upon diagnosing your current TM disorder your doctor may prescribe some or all of the following conservative (reversible) therapy.

TMJ Surgery

Surgery can help restore your jaw joint and eliminate the pain and other symptoms of TM disorders. With other treatment available, surgery is rarely needed, especially if a problem is diagnosed and treated early. In some cases, however the joint becomes so severely damaged that surgery is needed to correct it.

Arthroscopy/Arthrocentesis – These procedures are used for localized joint pain that doesn’t respond to other treatment. Your doctor inserts a tiny instrument (arthroscope) through a small incision or used small needles (arthrocentesis) to flush the joint and insert an anti-inflammatory agent.

Soft Tissue Repair – People with severe soft tissue damage may need this procedure to tighten up stretched connective tissue and ligaments. It also puts the disk back into position, releasing “locked” jaws.

Joint Restructuring – This surgery is used primarily for arthritis patients with badly deteriorating joints, such as severed disks or disks with holes in them. The condyle is smoothed and the joint is restructured. In some cases, part or all of the joint may be replaced with an artificial joint.

After managing emergencies during the crisis, we are now making appointments in Haddonfield, Washington Twp, and Woolwich to treat those who have done their part and waited patiently.

We've gone well beyond all regulations and guidelines to protect our patients and our staff. We utilize the latest state-of-the-art Powered Air Purifying Respirators (PAPR) to protect ourselves and our patients. This is what the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls the highest level protection available with 99.8% filtering capability that exceeds N95 masks. We also have hospital-grade air recirculation units that eliminate the aerosol so many fear in the surgical suite.